DMs during live streams? Auto-beat video editing? AI that literally animates your selfies? Yep, this week’s social updates are wild, weird, and kind of wonderful.

Here’s your essential round-up of what’s happening in social land right now.

What’s New on TikTok?

Slide into Their DMs... Live!

TikTok just dropped a game-changer for creators and brands going LIVE: you can now activate DMs during a live stream. The feature, called LIVE Setup for Client Acquisition, lets viewers message you directly while you're broadcasting.

It’s built for lead gen and fan connection in real time, and could be the missing link for creators who want to turn casual viewers into actual clients.

AI Alive: Bringing Your Photos to Life

TikTok is testing AI Alive, a feature that transforms static photos into animated videos within TikTok Stories.

It’s experimental for now, but if rolled out widely, expect AI-generated motion content to flood your feed.

Alt texts are finally here!

TikTok is expanding its accessibility tools, now including alt text for photos and improved auto-captions. It’s a welcome move toward more inclusive content, and a good reminder for all creators to make their posts accessible by default.

What’s New in Edits?

Edits Adds a Beat Sync Tool

Meta’s CapCut rival Edits now includes a feature called Beats, which helps you sync visual cuts perfectly with music tracks. Think transitions that actually hit on beat, without needing to do manual frame-by-frame edits.

{{cta-component}}

What’s New on Facebook?

AI Video Expansion Hits Facebook Reels

Meta is rolling out a futuristic upgrade: AI-powered video expansion for Reels. The tool generates “unseen pixels” to automatically resize your videos (adjusting framing, ratios, and borders on the fly for different placements).

Basically, it’s auto-cropping on steroids. Cross-platform creatives, this one’s for you.

What’s New on Threads?

Multiple Links in Bio? Finally.

Threads is now letting users add multiple links to their profile. That means you can now promote your store and your latest article and your cat’s Instagram. A small but mighty win for anyone tired of the “one link to rule them all” game.

{{form-component}}

What’s New on X?

Ad Link Previews Just Got a Makeover

X (formerly Twitter) is testing new link preview formats for sales-focused ads, including larger thumbnails and clearer CTA buttons. It’s a cleaner, more conversion-optimized look, and definitely signals that X is doubling down on ad tools.

Will it actually boost click-throughs? Too early to tell, but marketers should keep an eye on it.

The Mirror Never Lies — But Your Branding Might

You know what’s wild?

Digital branding has become the corporate version of catfishing — all gloss, no guts. The tagline slaps, your hex codes are blessed by the gods of contrast, and your “brand voice” probably took six weeks of soul-searching via Slack threads and lukewarm coffee. And yet... 44% of your audience still feels unseen. Not misunderstood. Not mildly confused. Straight-up invisible.

But hey, the metrics look sexy in the pitch deck, right? Here’s the uncomfortable bit: most of what passes for digital branding today is smoke, mirrors, and collective delusion — built on borrowed aesthetics, borrowed voices, and borrowed time.

Let’s break that spell.

Lie #1: "Our Brand Is Authentic Because We Say It Is"

Let’s say it plainly: if you need to declare your brand authenticity every other paragraph, there’s a good chance it’s cosmetic. And yes, the data’s worse than your rebrand’s ROI. According to a Forbes, 86% of consumers say authenticity matters when choosing who to support. But only 23% believe brands are actually delivering it. I mean, that's brand catfishing on a global scale.

Now, you might feel authentic. You might even have the tone nailed on social media. But brand authenticity doesn’t live in your tagline or your color codes. It shows up in the decisions your team makes when no one's watching — and especially when everyone is.

Social Media Branding: Where “Authenticity” Gets Airbrushed

Nowhere is this more painfully obvious than on social media. Brands drop phrases like “real talk” and “unfiltered” while polishing their captions like they’re writing wedding vows. That’s the problem. 57% of consumers feel less than half of branded content actually feels genuine. Because curated vulnerability isn’t the same thing as honesty — and your audience knows it.

Now, this isn’t about being raw or radical. It’s about saying fewer things you think they want to hear, and backing the ones you do say with behavior. Skip that, and your social media branding becomes another performance in the feed, not a point of connection.

When Being “Authentic” Backfires: The BrewDog Case

Take BrewDog — a brand that built its identity on anti-corporate rebellion. They sold "punk" and disruption like it came on tap. Then came the exposé: employees calling the culture “toxic,” reports of bullying, and leadership described as ego-driven. Suddenly, that rebellious charm? It curdled.

Consumers weren’t just disappointed. They were insulted. Because when a brand wraps itself in authenticity and then pulls a 180, it feels like betrayal — not just bad PR.

Brand authenticity isn’t what you say. It’s what people believe after watching you for a while.

So… what’s your audience really seeing?

Lie #2: "Consistency Is Overrated; Innovation Is Key"

When Innovation Becomes an Excuse for Branding Amnesia

There’s always that one exec. Loves chaos, hates templates. Thinks consistency is for brands that peaked in 2009. So instead, the logo morphs every quarter, messaging shifts with the mood board, and the website? You’re lucky if it still knows what year it is.

But while you're “keeping things fresh,” your audience is busy forgetting who you are.

A survey found that 68% of businesses saw revenue growth of at least 10% simply by sticking to consistent branding. That’s money. And it doesn’t come from being clever — it comes from being remembered.

Visual Brand Identity Isn’t Decoration — It’s Your Face

Your visual brand identity isn’t just a logo and a pantone fetish. It’s pattern recognition for humans. You lose consistency there, you lose the brand entirely. According Forbes, consistent branding across platforms can raise revenue by as much as 23%. In other words, your “bold new redesign” might be bleeding conversions while your Slack pings celebrate it.

Consistency Is Not the Enemy of Innovation

Let’s not twist this. You’re allowed to evolve — but when you treat your brand like a blank canvas every six weeks, you're not innovating. You’re deleting progress.

True innovation happens within a recognizable structure. Brands like Mailchimp, Notion, and even Figma have evolved, sure — but their visual tone, brand voice, and UX anchors haven’t been reset every time someone pitched “a cool idea.”

If you want to innovate, fine. Just don’t forget what made people care in the first place. Brand consistency isn’t a straightjacket. It’s scaffolding. Strip it, and you’re not building — you’re improvising.

So if your team’s biggest flex is “we never do the same thing twice,” ask yourself why your audience never clicks twice either.

Lie #3: "A Strong Logo Equals a Strong Brand"

Let’s just say it: slapping a clean logo on weak brand behavior is like throwing a tuxedo on a raccoon and calling it a CFO. Sure, 75% of people can recognize your brand by the logo — but what happens after that recognition? That’s where things usually fall apart.

Because branding isn’t only about being seen. It’s about being believed. And no logo, no matter how many hours your design team argued over kerning, can carry trust on its own.

Your visual brand identity helps you get remembered. But it’s your online brand reputation — the way you respond to feedback, the friction in your user journey, the consistency of your voice — that decides whether you’re remembered well or barely.

Ask yourself: if someone removed your logo from your content, would they still recognize the tone, the values, the attitude? Or would it read like it came off a template site selling discount protein bars?

Building a real brand takes more than a mark. It takes memory. And memory lives in repetition, behavior, and — inconveniently — what your audience says when you're not in the room.

{{cta-component}}

Lie #4: "Social Media Presence Equals Brand Engagement"

You post. You hashtag. You rack up likes, and someone on your team calls that "engagement." But look, presence isn’t engagement.

If brand engagement strategies begin and end with a grid layout, you’re not building connection — you’re just checking a box with decent lighting.

According to a social survey, 78% of consumers now say a brand’s social media presence impacts their trust more than it did a year ago. And that’s not a compliment — that’s pressure. It means when your content is dead air, your brand perception online takes the hit.

Because trust doesn’t come from being seen. It comes from being heard responding — fast, human, and without sounding like you ran it through legal three times.

The Value of Showing Up — Without Performing

Let’s not confuse frequency with effectiveness. Posting 27 times a week while ignoring comments is like yelling into a void and calling it a conversation. Real brand engagement strategies aren’t about “keeping the feed warm.” They’re about curiosity, responsiveness, and usefulness — especially when nobody’s tagging you in praise.

Now, here’s a rare shout-out: JetBlue.

At one point, their social team turned basic flight issues into near-cult-level engagement just by doing one thing: answering like actual humans. Their customer sentiment jumped, their NPS soared, and they proved that interaction beats broadcast, every single time.

If you’re measuring performance by followers while your replies rot unanswered? You’re not engaging — you’re only ghost-posting. And eventually, your audience will return the favor. Quietly. Permanently.

Lie #5: "Our Story Speaks for Itself"

If It Speaks for Itself, Why Is Nobody Listening?

A brand story that “speaks for itself” usually isn’t speaking to anyone. That phrase is often just code for “we wrote it once and copy-pasted it into the footer.” But here’s a hard number to ruin lunch: good storytelling can increase a product’s perceived value by up to 2,706%. That’s what happens when people actually feel something before they’re asked to click something.

You don't get there by saying “we were founded in 2011” and ending the sentence. You need narrative relevance. You need perspective. And yes, you need updates — because if your messaging hasn’t shifted since your audience had a BlackBerry, you’re not telling a story. You’re quoting one.

Static Stories Don’t Build Digital Brand Trust

Trust doesn’t grow from a single origin tale. It grows from how that tale evolves — across product decisions, support channels, brand voice, and even that offhand tweet someone sent under your logo. If the audience can’t follow the arc, or worse, sees no arc at all, trust withers. Quietly.

Great brands rethink their narrative every time something major shifts — in the culture, in the market, or in themselves. Not because they’re bored. Because staying static in a moving space feels dishonest.

You don’t get points for having a story. You get points when people believe it’s still true.

Lie #6: "Online Reputation Is Out of Our Control"

When brands say their online reputation is out of their hands, it’s usually code for: “We ignored feedback until it became a fire.” The truth is… Consumers are more likely to trust a company with a strong online presence and a clean reputation. That’s almost everyone. And they’re watching — not just what you post, but how you behave when something hits the fan.

Online reputation is a living, bleeding summary of your digital brand strategy in action (or lack of it). It’s built every time you choose whether or not to respond to a negative review. Every time your CEO tweets something offbeat. Every time support ghosts a customer. Every time you post performative brand storytelling that doesn’t align with how you treat your people or your audience.

Control? No. Influence? Absolutely.

You can't silence public opinion. But you can shape it — by consistently showing up like you give a damn. Here's what that actually takes:

• A frictionless way to monitor public feedback.
• A team that's empowered (and trained) to respond like humans, not templates.
• A rhythm of collecting and acting on reviews — not just fishing for stars.
• Transparency that isn't a PR tactic. It's a habit.

If you’re running digital without a feedback loop, you're flying blind.

{{form-component}}

Lie #7: "Personal Branding Doesn't Affect Corporate Branding"

This one’s a favorite. A company spends six figures on brand voice development, perfects every last tone guide… and then lets its employees hit the internet sounding like confused motivational posters or unchecked memes. Meanwhile, 70% of employers now say personal branding outweighs résumés. Not by a little. That’s hiring, trust, and public perception being shaped by your team’s X takes — not your annual brand refresh.

Your brand isn't just what marketing says. It's what your people tweet, comment, and co-sign. One off-brand hot take from a senior exec and you're spending Monday writing statements instead of content. Fair? Maybe not. But perception beats fairness — every time.

Your Staff Are Your Brand. Even When You Wish They Weren’t.

The moment someone adds your company name to their bio, your brand engagement strategies become personal. It’s no longer enough to publish polished PR; now, trust lives in the micro-interactions. A rude DM? That’s brand damage. A thoughtful post? That’s PR you didn’t pay for.

Corporate branding leaks. It shows up in Slack screenshots, Glassdoor reviews, and comment threads. You don’t get to opt out.

So, What Do You Do With That?

You align. You train your team on brand voice — not to sanitize them, but to guide consistency. You reward employees who represent you well. You make it easy for them to post with integrity. And when someone goes rogue? You address it like your reputation depends on it — because it does.

If your internal voice contradicts your external one, the public will always believe the leak. Not the logo.

Facing the Truth and Rebuilding Trust

Look, digital branding is never been about how loud you are; it’s about who’s actually still listening. You can have the glossiest grid, the slickest copy, the perfectly cropped “authentic” team shots… and still have a brand identity that no one could pick out of a police lineup.

Brutal? Sure. But true.

We’ve poked holes in the shiny myths — the worship of logos, the myth of omnipresence, the illusion of authenticity-by-default. What’s left is uncomfortable, but it’s also your clean slate. Real connection isn’t algorithmic. Brand trust isn’t a KPI. And loyalty doesn’t come from vibes — it comes from receipts.

So maybe now’s a good time to stop marketing to your reflection and start branding for the people who’ve been side-eyeing your “authenticity” this whole time.

Run the audit. Ask the hard questions. And for once, answer like a human.

The $5,000 T-Shirt Nobody Saw

Most brand awareness campaigns are so thoroughly ignored, they could file for invisibility benefits. Not because the creatives were lazy or the budget was tight — but because someone somewhere mistook “vibes” for strategy.

You’d be surprised how often six-figure campaigns are approved with all the enthusiasm of a TED Talk… and the planning rigor of a drunk text.

Here’s the surprising bit: 85% of marketing campaigns flop. Like, belly-up, pre-launch.

Why? Because too many teams skip the boring stuff — like actual brand awareness campaign goals — and skip straight to the fireworks.

So no, your campaign didn’t get outsmarted. It got out-planned. You threw a party no one was invited to — and now you're wondering why no one's dancing.

The 'It’ll Work Because We’re Cool' Fallacy

Cool logo. Clever slogan. Video budget that could fund three indie films. You’ve nailed the vibe. But here's the twist: you’re still a whisper in a concert hall.

That’s what happens when brand awareness objectives are scribbled down like a last-minute dinner order—vague, unmeasurable, and usually some recycled version of “we want people to know we exist.” It’s not that you didn’t try. You just didn’t aim.

Too many teams mistake ambition for a strategy and approval for audience insight. Internally, there’s a quiet epidemic of false consensus bias—the assumption that your campaign’s brilliance is self-evident because everyone in the room loves it. But that’s not market validation. That’s a creative echo chamber.

Peloton’s 2019 holiday campaign had a premium product, a wide media spend, and a brutal outcome. Critics torched the ad for being tone-deaf and oddly dystopian. The backlash erased over $1.5 billion in market value in just days. Not because the execution failed—but because the campaign lacked emotional clarity and cultural alignment. A textbook miss in brand awareness advertising.

You’ve likely heard someone say, “We know our audience.” They rarely do. What they usually mean is: “We’ve seen a persona doc from two quarters ago and had three Slack threads about Gen Z.” That’s not knowing. That’s guessing with branding goggles on.

Strong brand awareness strategy doesn’t just ask what you’re saying—it forces you to answer why anyone outside your team should care. And if that answer sounds like “we’re innovative” or “we disrupt,” you’re already in trouble. Nobody thinks they're boring.

Campaigns fail at this stage because too many marketers plan with assumptions instead of audits. Excitement becomes a substitute for evidence. And when no one outside your war room is nodding, the ad doesn’t need more spend—it needs a reality check.

The hard truth is… you can be creative, smart, and cool—and still be completely irrelevant.

And no, brand affinity won’t save you if nobody notices you were talking.

Those Metrics Are Lying to You. And You're Paying Them to Do It.

You got 10 million impressions. And zero recall. Congrats—your campaign just ghosted your entire audience.

But it looked great in the wrap-up deck, didn’t it? The problem is, marketers keep dancing with numbers that don’t actually say anything. Views, likes, shares—all the decorative tinsel in the world won’t save you if no one remembers who you are a week later.

And here’s where the joke gets expensive. According to WARC, 70% of ad campaigns generate less than £2 for every £1 spent. Which means most campaigns don’t just underperform—they drain cash while being clapped for by the wrong metrics.

This is what happens when marketers chase what's visible, not what's valuable. Brand awareness measurement barely gets mentioned. Because it’s harder to track. Because it’s less flattering. Because it doesn’t inflate egos with hollow wins.

Then there’s the pixelated circus known as social video. YouTube, Facebook, and friends will gladly count a “view” after three seconds. Meta’s own standards define it that way. That’s not engagement. That’s someone waiting to find the skip button. But hey, it still makes the report look nice, right?

Here’s what actually matters if you care about impact:

• Aided brand recall (Did they even know it was you?)
• Sentiment shift (Did they feel differently after?)
• Top-of-mind awareness over 90 days (Are you remembered, or were you just background noise?)

None of these live in vanity metrics. But they do shape every serious brand awareness strategy that wasn't built for a chart, but for real-world recall.

So next time someone says, “The impressions were incredible,” ask: By whose standards? If your brand awareness campaign goals don’t include memory, meaning, or momentum, what exactly did you measure—besides how long someone forgot you?

{{cta-component}}

Why 69% of People Ignore You

You’re speaking French to a German crowd, then sending follow-up emails asking why no one bought your croissant. That’s what happens when you confuse reach with resonance.

According to MarketingWeek, 69% of consumers say the brand messages they receive are irrelevant. That’s nearly 7 out of 10 people mentally binning your content before you’ve even said hello. It’s not because your product’s bad. It’s because you’re solving a problem they don’t think they have — or worse, you’re talking like they already love you. They don’t. Yet.

And it’s not just noise—it’s misalignment. As Wade Burrell, Principal Product Marketing Manager at Intuit Mailchimp, puts it:

This is what broken brand awareness looks like. Not misfiring creatively, but aiming at the wrong crowd entirely. Or no crowd. Just vibes.

You don’t get credit for pushing your campaign to “millennials” or “tech-savvy professionals” if the persona came from a workshop three interns ago. Broad targeting is not strategy. It’s a numbers-based tantrum that hopes volume will fix relevance.

Marketers love to assume people think like them. That the headlines they like, the trends they follow, the memes they laugh at — those must be universal. That’s what turns your entire campaign into inside jokes nobody’s inside on.

Budget Isn’t the Problem. Your Campaign Is.

You didn’t need a bigger budget. You needed a working brain.

Too many marketers treat the brand awareness marketing plan like a mood board. All vibe, no math. All glam, no grip. You threw $250k at TV slots and left $5k for actual copy—the thing that explains what you do. And then said, “It didn’t land.” Of course it didn’t.

Yahoo’s “It’s You” campaign blew through a reported $100 million. The message was unclear. The impact? Unmeasured. The audience? Confused.

It’s a gold-standard example of lighting cash on fire in the name of “reach.”

On the other end, Glossier, built a brand awareness strategy off community-first marketing, obsessive customer feedback, and hyper-loyal micro-influencers. No splashy ads. No pointless billboards. Just relevance, earned with restraint. The budget didn’t scale the success—the insight did.

Most failed campaigns aren’t underfunded. They’re misfunded. There’s a difference.

Here’s where things start to sting: You spent more on swag than segmentation. You paid for cinematography but skipped the audience research. You celebrated impressions but forgot message clarity. And somewhere in that budget? Zero resources allocated to question the logic behind your brand awareness campaign ideas.

You didn’t lose to budget constraints. You lost to your own misalignment.

If your brand awareness campaign goals don’t start with “reach the right people” and end with “measure what they now remember,” what were you even buying?

Big budgets don’t protect bad strategies. In fact, they just make the failure louder.

Brands Who Bled and Brands Who Banged

Some brands spent millions just to be forgotten. Others barely raised their voice—and somehow owned the room. That’s the split between hype and actual brand awareness strategy. And it’s a brutal one.

Let’s start with the brands that bled. Because they didn't just miss. They missed while everyone was watching.

The Bleeders

In 2017, Pepsi ran a campaign starring Kendall Jenner that was meant to echo global activism. What it ended up doing was trivialize protest movements and draw massive backlash. The ad was pulled. Fast. The result was zero credibility gain, public ridicule, and a lesson in what happens when a brand uses cultural tension as costume.

Even worse—Yahoo’s “It’s You” campaign spent $100M on advertising that no one could actually explain. There was no consistent positioning. No clear message. Just a parade of glossy assets and vague identity gestures. Money doesn’t cure confusion—it just distributes it at scale.

The Bangers

Then there’s Oatly—whose absurdist 2021 Super Bowl ad featured their CEO playing keyboard in a field, singing, “Wow, no cow.”

Confusing? A little.

Memorable? Completely.

It split the room, but earned real brand awareness by being unmistakable. It didn’t pander. It committed.

And Notion—before it became the darling of product-led SaaS—quietly invested in YouTube creator sponsorships. Small creators. Low-budget. But laser-targeted. It resulted in a wave of unpaid advocacy and top-of-mind recall that made them unavoidable in productivity circles.

This is what good brand awareness campaign examples look like. Not because they had bigger budgets or better agencies—but because they respected attention and used it precisely.

While the bleeders mistook being seen for being remembered, the bangers understood that awareness only works if it outlives the ad.

So if your brand awareness campaign ideas start with “go viral” and end with “hope it sticks,” you’ve already booked your place in the first group. Permanently.

Focus less on being liked. Focus more on being clear, consistent, and impossible to confuse with anyone else. That’s what prints brand recall.

And if it doesn’t do that? You didn’t run a campaign. You ran an expensive experiment in brand amnesia.

So, What Does Work Before the Launch Button Gets Hit?

You don’t need another checklist. You need a sanity check. Because if 85% of campaigns fail before they ever launch, then clearly, most people don’t know when to stop themselves.

Let’s fix that. Starting with what everyone skips:

Your brand awareness campaign goals should make sense outside a boardroom.

“We want to be known.” By who? For what? In how long? Vague goals guarantee vague outcomes. You need specifics that a marketer, a CFO, and a tired intern can all understand. Otherwise, you’re just dressing confusion in KPIs.

Stop pretending demographics are insight.

Knowing your audience isn’t about age brackets or job titles. It’s about patterns, triggers, and the actual words they use. If you don’t know what your audience avoids, you definitely don’t know how to earn their attention.

Vanity metrics don’t validate strategy. They just pad dashboards.

A million impressions look cute until you realize no one remembers the ad two hours later. Real measurement means tracking shifts in sentiment, aided recall, and repetition that leads to retention. If it can’t be tracked meaningfully, it’s not worth celebrating.

{{form-component}}

Creative without relevance is just expensive noise.

If your campaign isn’t highly relevant or deeply distinctive, it’s background. You don’t have to be loud—you have to be unskippable. There’s a difference.

Pick distribution based on behavior. Not on department bias.

You don’t need to “be on TikTok” just because someone said Gen Z lives there. You need to understand if your audience expects value there. If the channel doesn't serve the message—or worse, the behavior—it’s just wasted budget.

That’s what a functioning brand awareness strategy actually looks like. Not flashy. Not philosophical. Just clear. With choices made on purpose—not because someone didn’t want to challenge the brief.

You can spend months building the perfect launch, but if the foundation’s soft, the rest collapses on impact.

A Campaign Built on BS Dies in the Brief

Most brand awareness campaigns don’t fail because they were too bold. They fail because someone nodded in a room full of PowerPoint slides and said, “This feels right.” But that feeling was… gas.

No, your audience doesn’t care how quirky your mascot is. They care if you show up when it matters—and if they remember you five seconds later.

So here’s the actual filter: If your campaign can’t survive five ruthless questions—Why now? Who cares? What’s the hook? How do we know it worked? Who gets fired if it doesn’t?—don’t launch.

Because if you need a miracle to measure it, you never planned to succeed. You just planned to look busy.

Pull fewer stunts. Ask harder questions. Then? Launch like you mean it.

Another TikTok ban delay? What are lockable Reels? And did Mosseri just admit that short videos flop on Threads?

Catch up on all the must-know updates from the world of social media in this week's shortlist!

What’s New on TikTok?

The TikTok Ban Saga Continues...

TikTok is still banned... kind of. Technically, the app is banned under the Senate-approved sell-off bill from early 2024. But President Trump has once again suggested he might extend TikTok’s deadline to sell to a U.S.-based company.

Right now, that deadline is set for June 18, but no buyer has stepped up. And with U.S.-China trade tensions escalating, negotiations are effectively on ice.

So where do things stand? Pretty much in limbo. TikTok’s stuck in a holding pattern, and U.S. creators and brands are (once again) left waiting to see what happens next.

As we’ve said many times before — diversify your platforms. Now.

{{cta-component}}

What’s New on X?

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down – X Gets a Reddit Vibe

X is quietly testing a new engagement format, swapping out the iconic heart for a thumbs-up icon (and potentially a thumbs-down too). If you feel like you already seen this somewhere, yes. This similar "scaling" feature is heavily used by Reddit.

Is it an attempt at algorithmic refinement? Or just another one of Musk's unpredictable aesthetic whims? Either way, it might change how users interact (and engage) with content.

What’s New on Instagram?

Lockable Reels Are Here (If You Know the Code)

After teasing the feature last month, Instagram has officially launched its first lockable Reel via The Weeknds profile. Viewers need a secret code ("ICANTSING", FYI) to unlock the exclusive content.

These lockable Reels open up new doors for creators and brands: think exclusive sneak peeks, gated discounts, or targeted updates for superfans. It's not widely available yet, but the use cases for niche community engagement are very promising.

Reels View Count Is Now Optional

Instagram is testing the ability to hide view counts on Reels. That means your audience can’t judge your creative worth based on numbers alone. Mental health win? Maybe. Engagement metrics dodge? Definitely.

Share Instagram Comments to Thread

You can now share your Instagram comment directly to Threads with a preview and post context. Cross-app synergy, Meta-style.

Edits App Has New Features

Meta's CapCut competitor, Edits, is getting beefier by the week. The newest updates include:

• 50 new animated text effects
• More filters for aesthetic variety
• Safe zone overlays for cross-platform optimization
• Frame rate customization tools
• Auto-captioning for accessibility and engagement

Meta's clearly serious about turning Edits into a top-tier creative suite. Is it better than CapCut? Still up for debate, but it's definitely catching up fast.

{{form-component}}

What’s New on Threads?

Threads is Testing Snippets

Threads is reportedly working on snippet creation tools. Think easily shareable, quotable post previews, which might finally give Threads a proper content format of its own.

Video Doesn't Perform on Threads

Mosseri confirmed what many suspected: video content doesn't do so hot on Threads. If you’ve been wondering why your Reels reposts flop, now you know.

When Curation Turns You Into a Content Thief

Content curation was supposed to help you stay sharp, not turn your feed into a glorified flea market. But here we are: small brands now shovel out curated noise and wonder why their engagement smells like yesterday’s leftovers.

Yes, audiences might not audit your posting habits, but their instincts do — and they’re quietly filing you under "reseller of recycled thoughts."

You think you're building authority? What you're really building is a garage sale nobody wants to visit twice. Look, if your idea of a strategy is reposting Medium articles with a thumbs-up emoji, congratulations: you’ve curated yourself out of credibility.

Let’s talk about why that ‘strategy’ isn't hiding the creative bankruptcy anymore.

Fine Line between “Curating Smart” and “Creative Bankruptcy”

There’s content curation. And then there’s posting like you owe your feed child support.

You know this already, but it needs to be said aloud: reposting other people’s brilliance without commentary isn’t “keeping your audience informed.” It’s announcing that you’ve run out of anything original to say — and you're hoping no one notices.

Even William Arruda, one of the most respected voices in personal branding, didn’t sugarcoat it:

Exactly.

That endless scroll is where engagement goes to rot. Because while your repost might earn a polite like or two, it rarely earns trust. People know the difference between leadership and maintenance. One builds credibility. The other just keeps the lights on.

Reposting without Context Isn’t Strategy

A curated feed without context is like sending Christmas cards to random addresses. Creepy. Pointless. And slightly embarrassing if someone actually opens it.

Smart social media content curation doesn’t mean dumping articles on your audience like a forgetful intern. It means selecting content that adds to a conversation you’re already leading. If the post doesn’t have at least 2–4 lines of personal commentary, relevance, or opinion, it’s not curated — it’s cloned.

And that subtle difference is exactly what separates the best content curation platforms from digital dumpsters. A good platform helps you filter. A better one helps you annotate, frame, and schedule with actual intention — not just velocity.

Content Curation vs Content Creation

Here's what most folks get wrong in the content curation vs content creation debate: they treat them like separate teams. They’re not. Curation should support your ideas — not replace them entirely.

Google’s own guidelines emphasize original, insightful content. That means curated content must deliver a fresh layer of value. No framing? No relevance? Then yes, you're filing your strategy under “creative bankruptcy” and wondering why your SEO looks like an unpaid intern set it up.

How Content Curation is Crippling Your SEO

There’s a difference between being strategic and being lazy with a scheduling tool. You already know which side endless content curation lands on.

If your idea of content curation for SEO is dumping other people’s content into your blog like a late-night buffet of borrowed thoughts, you’re already bleeding traffic. Quietly. And consistently. Google’s not punishing you — it’s just... unimpressed. According to 2023 report on the Helpful Content Update, sites relying heavily on regurgitated material saw up to 17% drops in organic traffic — some lost visibility altogether.

Google Doesn’t Want Your “Thought Recycling Program”

If your content reads like a classroom bulletin board — random links, re-shared snippets, meaningless quotes — it’s tanked before it even loads. Google officially calls this a failure to provide original value. In human terms? “Thanks for the copy-paste collage. You’re dismissed.”

Google’s official update states that any site “created for search engines rather than people” is deprioritized. What they’re not saying (but we all know): zero-effort curation doesn’t just underperform. It signals that you’ve stopped thinking for yourself.

And no, automating that mess with a shiny tool doesn't make it better — it just makes it faster. Automated content curation isn’t inherently bad, but treating it as a strategy instead of a shortcut? That’s where marketers get blindsided.

Why Your Audience Hates It (Even If They Don’t Say It)

People don’t need you to curate what they already saw on Twitter three hours ago. And they especially don’t need it without context.

Look…even when audiences don’t consciously complain, their brains do. According to research, when content lacks novelty or emotional contrast, the brain’s response is measurably weaker. It’s tied to a psychological effect called cognitive ease. Familiarity makes things easier to process, yes — but repetition without newness feels irrelevant. Your reader subconsciously tunes out.

So if your content sounds like what every other marketer said yesterday — only with slightly nicer formatting — congrats. You’ve become background noise. Again.

{{cta-component}}

Curation without Commentary Is Just Freeloading

This part hurts, but it needs to be said: reposting a link with no POV isn’t marketing. It’s freeloading. And it’s the exact opposite of SEO-effective behavior.

You can’t call yourself a strategist if your feed looks like a Pinterest board that forgot to think. Smart curation requires framing. Commentary. Original thought. If your caption is just a clapping emoji and a link to someone else’s case study, you’re not a thought leader. You’re a human RSS feed.

And you know what? Search engines notice. They track dwell time, click depth, bounce rates — and curated content without unique framing sends all of those into freefall.

The Saints and Sinners of Content Curation

There’s a thin, desperate line between being one of the top content curation websites — and being the digital equivalent of a clearance bin. And brands cross it more often than they’d like to admit.

Some do it with intention. Others? Well, they just... repost things and pray no one notices.

Adobe: The Saint Who Gets It

Adobe doesn’t guess. They don’t "hope for engagement." They run a smart content curation strategy rooted in original thought — often blending their own creative commentary with curated inspiration. Their B2B social arms, especially in segments like Adobe Express and Creative Cloud for Teams, saw up to 2x engagement increases when pairing curated educational links with original, branded insights that actually say something.

Not just reposting. Not just linking. Adding context.

That distinction matters. And clearly, audiences can tell the difference.

Yahoo

Yahoo, once a tech gatekeeper, slowly devolved into an aggregation treadmill. They didn’t lack volume. They lacked value. The feed became a stream of headlines from other outlets — no insight, no framing, no edge. Just more.

Curated content won’t save you from irrelevance if you’ve already outsourced your thinking.

It’s Not the Tools. It’s the Intent.

There are plenty of top content curation websites out there. Tools that do the scraping, aggregating, filtering. They’re useful — until they’re not. If your curation tool is filling your feed faster than your brain can process what’s going out, you’re not curating. You’re only broadcasting white noise with someone else’s logo on it.

The minute you remove your own thinking from the content process — even if it's just a single sentence of framing — you've exited the conversation. You’re no longer participating. You’re just amplifying.

How to Curate Like a Mad Genius

If your idea of “smart content curation” is dumping links like an unsupervised Slack thread, let’s start over.

Real curation is a strategy that tickles dopamine. Content that triggers surprise, novelty, or fresh value sees higher engagement. The brain responds to new + useful. Not reheated + obvious.

So if you’re not getting clicks, shares, or anything beyond polite silence, your curation isn’t clever. It’s copy-pasting with more steps.

Add Commentary or Don’t Bother

This is the bare minimum. You don’t repost without context. Ever.

Because nobody likes a streaker unless it’s funny — and right now, you’re just reposting naked ideas with zero interpretation. Every time you hit publish without a single sentence of framing, you’re telling your audience, “I found this, but I have no idea why it matters.”

At the very least, give them a reason to care. A stat to chew on. A perspective to consider. A takeaway to save. That’s what separates curating like a genius from dumping links like a robot.

Relevance Isn’t Optional

Curated content without relevance is worse than noise — it’s confusion in slow motion. If the article you’re sharing has nothing to do with what your audience is facing today, skip it. You don’t win credibility by posting smart stuff. You win by posting timely smart stuff.

Timing makes you look awake. And these days, that’s rare enough to be respected.

ZoomSphere’s Analytics helps you track what's working right now. Not only what performed well three months ago. Use the analytics, segment by behavior, and match what you share with what people actually interact with. That's the best practice.

Keep the Ratio. Or Keep Losing Relevance.

Top marketers work within a real content ratio: 65% original, 25% curated, 10% syndicated. That’s what keeps your brand from sounding like a remix album of other people’s takes.

Ignore the balance, and your audience will ignore you right back.

And if you're using curated content as a way to dodge hard thinking? Cool. But call it what it is.

So sure — curate. But don’t forget to comment. Contextualize. Critique. Challenge. Lead.

Cap Your Curation Before It Becomes a Crutch

Here’s the truth nobody likes to say out loud: the 25%–30% curation cap exists because marketers need limits. Without them, curation becomes camouflage for creative apathy.

You don't get to “balance” your feed with 80% borrowed links and call it a strategy. That’s not balance. That’s branding-by-echo.

Stick to the ratio. Or at the very least, stop pretending your weekly roundup of Medium links is thought leadership.

Switch the Format Before People Stop Looking

Text links are tired. Carousels. Short-form threads. Mini commentaries. Short videos that connect the dots. These are the minimum expectations.

You don’t have to chase every format. But if all you’re posting is the same shared headline, formatted the same way, in the same box every time — you're training your audience to scroll past you. Automatically.

Don’t Clone. Lead.

If you remember nothing else, take this with you: you can’t curate effectively if you’re just copying what’s already viral. The internet already has BuzzFeed. You’re not helping by being BuzzFeed’s slightly quieter cousin.

This is about how to curate content effectively without cloning your competitors. Which means using tools that help you think with the platform, not against it.

And content curation tools are only as sharp as the human behind them. So, you don’t need more content. You need clearer context, better timing, and the guts to say something when you share something.

That’s what separates mad genius from mildly confused.

The Few Real (and Rare) Benefits of Content Curation

Let’s be clear: content curation is not the problem. Abusing it like a caffeine patch for your dried-up ideation tank is the problem.

When done right — and that’s a big if — curation earns its place. But only as seasoning. It’s not the turkey. It never was. Yet too many marketers keep dishing it out like it’s the whole meal.

Authority Needs More Than Just Links

One of the real benefits of content curation is its power to signal authority — but only when you mix it with your own analysis. Sharing relevant content without attaching your point of view doesn’t make you insightful. It makes you a messenger. A branded middleman. And no one follows a mouthpiece unless there’s something worth quoting.

Add your commentary. Explain the “why.” That’s where trust comes from. No voice, no edge. Just noise.

{{form-component}}

It Can Prove You’re Paying Attention (If You Actually Are)

There’s also value in using curation to show real-time awareness. Trends shift fast. When your audience sees you posting content that reflects today — not six weeks ago — you signal relevance.

The fresher the insight, the more valuable the brain thinks it is. Research shows that new information tied to real-time events is perceived as significantly more useful than recycled data, even when the content quality is identical.

But again, recency without relevance is just newsfeed anxiety in brand form. Don’t curate because it’s “new.” Curate because it’s needed — right now.

You Might Save Time — But Not the Kind You Think

Here’s the part everyone gets wrong: content curation doesn’t save you time on strategy. It saves you time on execution. That’s it.

You still need to decide what matters, why it matters, and who it matters to. If you’re using curation to avoid thinking altogether, you're not saving time. You’re just outsourcing your standards.

Smart marketers use curation to reduce publishing friction — not to replace having a brain.

Real Brands Build Ideas — The Rest Just Retweet Them

If content curation is still your main course, don’t be surprised when your brand’s voice sounds like background noise at a dentist’s office. Real marketers build ideas; they don’t just reshuffle someone else's scraps onto a nicer plate.

The brands winning now are mixing curation with creation like it’s a science, not a desperate Tuesday night. They know that trust dies fast when audiences smell a copycat. Authenticity isn’t just a trend — it's the minimum fee to stay in the room (ask anyone who's marketing to Gen Z).

Get serious about your ideas. Tighten your content curation strategy before your relevance slides out the side door.

ZoomSphere’s got tools that actually help you think, not just repost.

You Posted Pretty… But Got Pity

You want social media engagement? Cool. So does everyone else.

You made it clean. Branded. Caption sprinkled with emojis and wisdom. The post was so wholesome it could babysit your nephew.

And yet—flatline.

No saves. No shares. A pity-like from your intern, and one rogue comment: “love this 💕” (from a skincare bot).

It’s not that your content is bad. It’s that it’s harmless.

And in 2025, harmless doesn’t trend.

This isn’t about being loud or edgy. It’s about understanding the silent funeral happening every day under your posts—and why being “nice” is often the first sign your content’s already been ghosted.

The Case Against “Nice” Content

Nice Gets You Nowhere (Except Maybe Filtered Into Obscurity)

If you think social media engagement for brands is about polishing posts until they squeak, you’re about two years late — and roughly 300 algorithm updates behind. “Nice” content doesn’t get punished. It gets ignored so efficiently.

Platforms in 2025 only reward reaction. Something needs to hit. Hard enough that a bored thumb hesitates. But mildly pleasant, visually neat posts don’t hesitate anything. They’re processed like a limp handshake: received, registered, forgotten.

According to Search Engine Land, 58.5% of Google searches in the U.S. now end without a single click. Not one. People skim, extract, and move. No clicks. No engagement. No loyalty. Just passive consumption — which, in algorithmic terms, is death by boredom.

And don’t think social media is doing any better. Based on Social Insider’s 2025 benchmarks, Instagram’s engagement has already crashed by 28% year-over-year. That drop is a direct result of users developing what we’d call "engagement anemia" — a complete physiological intolerance for content that doesn’t make them feel something real.

The Problem With Being Polished and Painless

The truth nobody likes to spell out is, polished often reads as emotionally neutral. “Nice” posts feel mass-produced, safe, dipped in an anti-septic rinse of brand guidelines — and audiences can smell it faster than you can say “jack.”

Humans actually have a negativity bias baked into their operating systems. We respond faster and more intensely to things that shock, annoy, thrill, or challenge us than to anything that’s simply “nice.”

Negativity bias + emotional salience = engagement currency

If your content doesn’t spark a minor “wait, what?” or at least a flash of curiosity, it’s already halfway buried. In today’s algorithmic bloodsport, passive likes are just filler signals. They don’t boost you. They barely keep you breathing.

It’s not enough to post content that people “appreciate.”

If they don’t share, comment, argue, or save it, you didn’t win anything — you just got processed and forgotten.

The Algorithm Is Ruthless

Nobody wants to say it because it sounds mean, but look… the algorithm isn’t punishing you. It’s just too busy rewarding someone else.

It’s not sabotaging your beautifully polite, polished content. It’s treating it exactly the way it treats every other polished, polite post: like vapor.

Algorithms today just don’t care about your brand guidelines, color palettes, or inspirational captions pulled from LinkedIn circa. They’re programmed to chase response — fast, emotional, volatile.
And if you’re posting content that looks like a motivational desk calendar? Good luck getting a fraction of that.

Polished Doesn’t Perform. Raw Does.

It’s not theory anymore — it’s quantifiable. Platforms are increasingly tuned to favor watch time, saves, shares, and comment spikes. A passive scroll-past doesn’t move the needle. A “nice post” that earns a half-smile and no action doesn’t even register.

You want social media engagement strategies that actually survive 2025?

Start reading the room:

Brands like Ryanair, Scrub Daddy, and even the NBA are throwing out the legacy polish. They post things that seem a little rough, a little chaotic, and very, very alive.

And when you match this against global social media engagement statistics and industry engagement benchmarks, the reality doesn’t get softer.
It gets colder.

Your content isn't getting "less reach." It’s getting treated exactly as it behaves: silently, forgettably, and without urgency.

So, the algorithms didn’t move the goalposts. They just stopped pretending polish was interesting.

What You’re Not Doing Well

There’s a harsh little irony to social media engagement strategies in 2025:
Brands post more content than ever. Yet engagement rates keep bleeding out faster.

If you’re wondering why posting polished carousels still isn’t moving the dial, here’s a blunt truth:
You’re doing it by the book.
And the algorithm’s using that same book to wipe the floor with you.

As Matt Navarra pointed out:

Brands clinging to polish without emotional ignition are bleeding out reach — quietly, but visibly.

Instagram’s brand engagement has already reduced by 28%. And somehow, against all basic survival instinct, most brands responded by... posting even safer, nicer visuals.

If you’re waiting for a polite post to storm the gates of attention, you're going to be waiting until the algorithm puts your reach on hospice care.

The Hall of Unforgivable Posting Sins

You want to know why your engagement’s flatlining?

It’s usually one of these self-inflicted wounds:

• Posting without a hook.
  If your opening line couldn’t wake a houseplant, don’t expect it to wake an algorithm.
• Caring more about design than the first sentence.
  Your grid looks gorgeous. Nobody cares. Attention is hijacked by words first, visuals second.
• Writing captions like you're terrified someone might comment.
  Safe, agreeable captions aren’t just boring. They’re anti-conversation. They’re digital white noise.
• Hiding from conflict, humor, or opinion.
  If your brand voice sounds like a legal disclaimer, expect engagement levels to match.

Real Engagement Demands Risk, Not Perfection

Social media engagement best practices in 2025 aren’t about “consistency” or “brand tone guidelines” anymore. They're about creating a disruption spike — a moment where someone actually stops what they’re doing because your post grabbed something inside their chest.

This is doubly true for social media engagement for small businesses. When you don’t have millions of ad dollars cushioning your mistakes, every post has to live or die by whether it creates emotional friction.

And no, this doesn't mean being edgy for the sake of it.
It means not posting like you’re scared to get noticed.

Because right now, the algorithm’s brutal math doesn’t care how good your Canva templates are.
It cares if you’re interesting enough to stop a scroll.

If not?
You’re not invisible because you posted too little.
You’re invisible because you posted too safely.

{{cta-component}}

Metrics That Matter (and the Ones Lying to Your Face)

Your Likes Don’t Mean Anything If Everyone Keeps Scrolling

You see, those likes are not performance. They’re not validation. They’re not even mildly interesting to the algorithm anymore. At best, they’re a soft acknowledgment that your post existed. At worst, they give you just enough hope to keep posting fluff that no one saves, shares, or comments on — and that’s the part the algorithm actually tracks.

If you’re obsessing over like counts, you’re measuring vanity, not value.
What matters in 2025 is what stays, what spreads, and what sparks noise.

And here’s the most embarrassing part:
A post with 300 likes and 0 shares has less algorithmic value than a scrappy one with 17 saves and 4 emotionally-charged comments.
Because engagement isn’t about applause anymore — it’s about action.

The Real Formula (That Most Still Get Wrong)

The proper social media engagement rate formula isn’t just about what you see at a glance. It’s this:

(Likes + Comments + Shares + Saves) / Reach x 100

But when was the last time you obsessed over your saves the way you stalked likes?

According to research, comments, saves, and shares all carry significantly more weight in most platform algorithms than likes. And the gap is only widening — especially on TikTok and Instagram.

The algorithm’s logic is simple:

• Shares = friction.
• Saves = value.
• Comments = relevance.
• Likes = background noise.

If you're still reporting social media engagement metrics without separating those signals out, you're letting fluff distract from the fire.

The Metrics Table Nobody Wants to Admit Is This Simple

Feel a little betrayed? Good. Now do something about it.

Start Using Tools That Actually Show You the Right Signals

If your social media engagement tools are just feeding you top-line vanity graphs with no way to dig into which posts drove real action, scrap them.

You need to be measuring what algorithms are actually tuned to reward — not what makes stakeholders feel good in a Monday slide deck.

What Actually Works in 2025

You’re not being shadowbanned. You're being outperformed — by brands that post things you would never get past your internal comms Slack thread.

The rules have changed. The algorithm isn’t filtering based on polish anymore. It’s rewarding pattern disruption. Friction. Audacity. Anything that makes a user stop, even for a second, and think: “Wait… what?”

You want to know how to increase engagement on social media right now?

You have to stop pretending you’re a museum and start acting like you’ve got something worth reacting to.

What’s Working Now? The Opposite of What Most Brands Are Posting

There’s no official rulebook. But if there were, it would have a giant disclaimer that says:
“Forget what worked in 2019.”

Here’s what’s driving real engagement in 2025:

• Posts that say the opposite of what people expect — not to be edgy, but because contrarian = curiosity.
• Series-style carousels that bait people with an open loop — slide one teases, slide three triggers a comment.
• Brands posting from the first person, admitting something uncomfortable. Example: “We lost engagement for 3 weeks. Here's why.”
• A tone that feels just unhinged enough to make a user scroll back up and think, “Wait, was that deliberate?”

Look at Liquid Death, Ryanair, Duolingo, The NBA — not for their shock value, but for the way they use emotional friction to force micro-decisions. And those micro-decisions — a pause, a save, a swipe-back — are everything now.

There’s Psychology Behind This. And It’s Brutal.

Algorithms are trained to reward what humans respond to. And humans, inconveniently, respond best to things that:

• Break patterns
• Reflect how they think (mirror neurons)
• Let them feel smart or in-the-know when they share it (status signaling)

If your brand isn’t playing into these psychological triggers, then it’s just broadcasting into a room that’s already full of better distractions.

{{form-component}}

You Don’t Need to Be Risky. You Only Need to Be Relevant

This isn’t a call to burn down your tone of voice. It’s a call to make sure your content doesn’t sound like you wrote it in a boardroom with three risk officers breathing down your neck.

Raw truth, friction, data-backed opinion — that’s the new engagement baseline.

And if you need a smarter way to track which posts are actually pulling emotional weight, not just fake engagement?

That’s where ZoomSphere becomes non-optional. You can’t grow what you won’t measure. You definitely can’t fix what you aren’t even noticing.

Algorithm’s Not the Enemy

If your social media engagement feels like a pity party lately, it’s not because you broke some secret rule.

It’s because “nice” content is a quiet way to tell algorithms, “Please ignore me.”

You don’t need softer visuals or deeper quotes. You need friction, questions, interruptions—the stuff that makes people stop mid-scroll like they just spotted an open bar at a dry wedding.

Tomorrow, post something your CEO would sweat over. Not offensive. Just alive.

Watch who flinches. Watch who shares.

Because if your content can’t spark a reaction, it’ll spark a scroll. One way or another, you choose how fast you disappear.